


We're not the same

by Greycoat



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Arguing, Bruce Banner Needs a Hug, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, No Spoilers, Not Canon Compliant, Science Boyfriends, Science Bros
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 14:09:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18718633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greycoat/pseuds/Greycoat
Summary: Tony accidentally calls Bruce Hulk.





	We're not the same

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this like two years ago so I guess it's time to publish it. This is a lot longer than needed.
> 
> Marvel owns everything here.

“Bruce, are you good in there?” Tony called through the bathroom door as he collided his knuckles with the white door. The door had been closed for an uncomfortable amount of time.

It had been a mission gone in the wrong direction. Not for everyone, but for Bruce it had. It was sort of success, but then there was an unfortunate episode involving the great doctor’s green side-persona. And when talking about unfortunate episodes that involve the said green side-persona, it is usually not a small episode. 

Every time episodes like this happen, Bruce is crushed. Crushed by the fact and knowledge that they were sort of his fists that had not-metaphorically crushed a few civilians, though not on purpose. They were just very large fists that were not built for accuracy. 

It didn’t matter for Bruce. He saw it as his own fault and no one else’s. 

That’s what he probably was thinking at the moment while standing under the shower. And it had been a while so Tony was getting a tad anxious. 

The billionaire tried the handle of the door just in case and found it to be locked. Now he was truly getting anxious. He was well aware of Bruce’s self-esteem problems and the lack of value the man saw in himself. 

“Hey Bruce, could you open the door for me?” Stark called again and leaned on the painted wood. Still, he got no response. 

“Jarvis, open the lock, please.”

There was a click and then Tony was pulling the door open and stepping inside. He felt a stab in his chest as his brain caught up with his eyes. It wasn’t what Tony’s subconsciousness had feared, but it wasn’t good either. 

Bruce was huddled into a small ball of a man in the corner of the shower cubicle. His face was buried into his knees and his arms were tightly wrapped around himself. The position on the hard floor tiles looked very uncomfortable. 

“Bruce?” Tony asked quietly and approached the shower spray. The only response he got was a small flinch from the physicist, so he continued his venture closer and when he was near enough he reached to shut the water off. 

“I’m gonna sit down with you, okay”, Tony reported as he crouched in front of Bruce and eventually sat down on the wet floor. He cringed a bit as the cold water soaked through his pants but moved only to touch his friend’s shoulder gently. 

“It’s okay, we’re okay”, Tony mumbled and snaked his arm just a bit further so it rested on both of Bruce’s shoulders. 

He heard a sharp intake of breath. 

“No, Tony, it’s not okay. Those people who died today are not okay”, Banner responded quickly. His voice held anger but it still sounded defeated. 

“Yeah, those people are dead but it wasn’t your fault.”

“They still died through my hands.”

“That is technically true, and I know you’re gonna blame yourself and I can’t help it, but we’ve been through this before and we always make it, right?”

“That’s my point exactly! We’ve been through this before. Normal people don’t go through a murder every now and then and just move on with their lives”, Bruce exclaimed as he lifted his head up and looked at Tony through pained eyes. He brought his hand up and buried them into his wet curls. Tony’s hand rubbed his upper arm gently. 

“Well, we’re not normal people, clearly. We just need to accept that these kinds of mishaps happen with us. Come on Bruce, let’s get out of here. You must be cold”, Stark said and pushed his friend just a bit away from the shower wall. 

It felt like a herd of wild horses hitting him with their hooves as they sprinted across the pasture and shoved him towards a great deep canyon. Like the fall waiting for him was 240 meters high and he would dive through the surface of the water in the bottom, too shaken and too much in pain to try to get air in his lungs again on the surface. He would sink slowly, observing how it got progressively darker the deeper he went. How the bubbles escaping from his mouth disappeared from his sight. 

“Please don’t! Please…-”, Bruce exclaimed as he started away from Tony’s touch, “please don’t do that”, he continued with his normal deep mumble and shied his face from the billionaire. His breath was uneven and he was worried about the mechanic’s safety. 

Tony’s eyebrows shot up at the sudden reaction. The doctor had seemed very passive until that point so he had definitely not been waiting for it. With lips pressed into a thin line, he observed his pal with a worried expression.

“Okay, I won’t do it again, I’m sorry”, he said calmly. Bruce was hunched in on himself a mere half a meter further and was shaking a tad more than before. 

“But Bruce, let’s get out of here”, Tony sighed and moved to stand up, but stopped when he noticed no response from the doctor, “listen, I can only imagine how you must feel, but you too have to understand how others feel.”

That got Bruce to tense. He shut his eyes to help block the punch Tony’s next words were probably going to cause. He had never before told him how the other teammates dealt with the knowledge that Bruce keeps killing civilians by accident. He hadn’t been waiting for this conversation. Tony probably wanted him to leave or stop helping them so no further accidents were to happen. 

“No, buddy, it’s not that.”

He had probably noticed the thoughts on his face. 

“We all know that it’s not you. Of course, it is a big deal if civilians get hurt, but it’s not you making those accidents happen. It’s just your body, sort of, that is being used and you should not blame yourself for that. We don’t want to see you taking your own punch.”

“Tony, you should know that I’m taking my own punch all the time. Living as me is punching myself because as you have noticed, I can have pretty huge fists sometimes”, Bruce answered. He sounded so tired. He was. 

“Let me help you take your own punches then. I want to.”

“My punches can kill you, Tony. A single one could. They can’t do that for me.”

“Oh, so that’s what you want now, huh?”

“I didn’t mean it to come out that way. I just…-”, he paused and sighed, rubbing his face with his open palm, “I just don’t want this.” There was a hard emphasis on ‘this’. 

“You don’t wanna sit in the shower cubicle with me or you don’t want what Hulk does to you?”

“The latter.” 

Tony finally got up and rolled his shoulders to make the muscles function again. He offered a hand to Bruce and looked him deep in the eyes.

“I don’t like what he does to you either, but there’s not much we can do about that. We just have to get through and we can do that together.”

Bruce pondered the offer for a moment. He was nibbling on his lower lip and moved his gaze from Tony’s hand to his face and then to his hand again. He grabbed it and let Tony pull him to his feet. 

“You really want to get through all this with me?” Bruce’s gentle question lingered in the air for a couple of seconds, through which Tony blinked a few times until he grabbed the physicist’s face and looked him in the eyes.

“Of course, Bruce. I have this far and I will never stop. What can I do to make you understand that I want you and you are worth this?” Tony asked in an airy voice but didn’t wait for an answer. It was a question nobody could answer. 

The mechanic sighed and gave the scientist’s forehead a kiss before moving his hands from the other’s face to wrap the man in his arms. He felt the tension in Bruce’s shoulders to fade away as he pressed the man close to his chest. Banner hid his face into the crook of Tony’s neck and let the man’s words sink in. 

It was true that Tony had never implied that Bruce would not be welcomed in his life. He had always done everything he could to make the shy man comfortable and he had succeeded pretty well. They became friends during the first years as the Avengers and their relationship just developed deeper from that: they became science bros, best friends, and eventually science boyfriends. It’s still felt weird for Bruce to say it aloud or even to think about it. Tony was his boyfriend and he was Tony’s boyfriend. 

“I just… It’s hard for me to see why you would want to be with me, I mean you’re Tony Stark and I’m just… I’m just me.”

Tony felt his heart break a little bit with those words. Truth be told: Bruce had broken Stark’s heart many times with his words about himself. The physicist really couldn’t see his own value and it made Tony suffer. He had taken it as his responsibility to make Banner see and understand what his existence truly meant for himself, Tony and the other Avengers. In time Bruce would learn to love himself and learn that others could love him too.

“Bruce, you’re alive. Right? You breathe, you occupy space and you have mass.”

Bruce pulled back a bit to look into Tony’s eyes. The man’s expression was very solid, there was no hint of humor on his face. Bruce frowned his brows in confusion, waiting for Tony to make his point.

“You know what that means? You matter.”

When the silence had continued for a minute, Tony broke the grin he had been holding and quirked his eyebrow. Bruce shook his head slowly, returning to hide his face against Tony’s shoulder and wrapped his arms around the mechanic’s waist. 

“You just made the worst physics pun ever but it was really sweet”, Banner sighed and tightened his hug momentarily. “Did you get it from Tumblr?”

“What, no.”

Bruce wasn’t sure if he believed it but it didn’t _matter_ at the moment. He felt Tony, too, tighten his hug and for the moment it was just the two of them in a perfect kind of symbiosis. Tony making Bruce feel better and Bruce helping Tony feel better by feeling better himself. It was a win/win. 

“I’m feeling very naked”, Bruce stated casually, not moving an inch away from Tony.

“Well, my dear”, Tony started, sighing in an exaggeratedly content manner, “that is because you are naked.”

Bruce let out a huff of laughter and Tony finally pulled away and grabbed the man’s hand in his. “Let’s go get you some clothes and then we’ll hit the hay. What say you?”

“Sounds pretty good.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, please leave a comment and kudos if you feel like it!
> 
> and yes, the pun is from tumblr


End file.
